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WhyHulud t1_iu2th3i wrote

"Religious people touching kids and covering it up" barely hits the radar anymore, WTF

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MyLittlePIMO OP t1_iu309ba wrote

TBH there’s something different with the Jehovah’s Witnesses accusations that have been surfacing left and right lately.

The Catholics and Southern Baptists hired external auditors and made policy reforms and apologies

The Jehovah’s Witnesses literally have made announcements to members telling them not to read or listen to media, that it’s all lies from Satan, played video demonstrations of JWs literally running away when someone tries to show them a news article that is critical, and remind the members that the end of the world is coming any minute now, so don’t get caught up in these things.

(Link here to watch their broadcast to members, it’s all in the first 30 minutes if you can stomach it and are curious)

I don’t think any of the major religious organizations caught up in this level of scandal has stooped to quite the same level of mass denial. There’s over a million JWs in the US that hang on the leaders’ every words. It’s basically Scientology for poor people except 100x the global membership. Same structures of power, too, shunning and attacking any members that leave.

Pennsylvania is the first state to do an investigation at the state level. There’s been a ton of civil lawsuits and journalists (the Atlantic, the Spokesman-Review, the VICE documentary) exposing a lot though, as well as massive data to come out of Australia’s investigation that found molestation cover up rates 10x that of the Catholic Church per capita, and the Norway rulings over shunning as a social control.

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WhyHulud t1_iu3m6rl wrote

They're a cult. They shun outsiders, they discourage higher learning, they insist followers listen to the leader for their information. There's an excellent YouTube producer who calls himself Telltale. He's an ex-JW. He talks about how they're a cult quite often.

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MyLittlePIMO OP t1_iu4l5st wrote

Yeah. I try not to lead with that word these days because it’s a bit overused, but they absolutely fit most definitions, including the BITE model.

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MrPeePeePaws t1_iu3n552 wrote

Well the broadcast video was both an interesting insight into that world and….. completely bat shit crazy. Yikes.

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jetsetninjacat t1_iu3vbam wrote

It said some had moved. I wonder if the church helped facilitate some of those moves.

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